The Pacific solution is a fraud on us

"I don't recognise the man I now see publicly as Ruddock. Snarling, teeth bared, eyes hard and unaccommodating, like politics' equivalent of a pit bull terrier faithfully on guard duty."

Curiously, the federal Coalition frequently invokes nostalgia for the Robert Menzies years, but in fact has struck out in directions that would have been anathema to Menzies. They drag us into areas that Malcolm Fraser bravely anointed with his rhetoric, but which, as a matter of prudential practice, he didn't have the pluck to embark upon himself.

We now have the most ideologically driven government in the history of the nation.

For instance, there is no justification for impounding the present crops of refugee claimants in remote camps in hostile desert territory or in other uncongenial places in the back of beyond.

The wish to avoid media scrutiny is not a justification for this cruel, inhumane treatment. In fact, a government infused with genuine humanitarian concerns and a respect for basic rights of people would reject remote detention places as uncivilised treatment of human beings - and would facilitate media access to those centres. The public has a right to know the facts - which was an alien quality in discussion on this issue late last year.

Nor is the desire to inflict punishment through social deprivation and vilification, as we have depressingly witnessed, the way any responsible but compassionate Australian would wish to see these people treated. The fact that most of these people are not Christians makes their treatment even more objectionable.");document.write("

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And I don't understand the minister, Phil Ruddock. I recall him over my years in the parliament as a caring man, gentle in many impressive ways, committed to the best aspects of his Christian commitment.

I don't recognise the man I now see publicly as him. Snarling, teeth bared, eyes hard and unaccommodating, like politics' equivalent of a pit-bull terrier faithfully on guard duty for his master, ready to maul, to injure.

It's not a welcome image in my living room and, frankly, it's not fair to that good man Ruddock whom I knew and admired as a parliamentary colleague.

Our official behaviour on this issue is a matter of national shame. The so-called Pacific solution is a fraud we are perpetrating on ourselves, and we are paying big bucks to dupe ourselves - or taxpayers are through their collective noses. It was undertaken under the influence of an impending election, designed as a political stunt to demonstrate how tough we can be.

I accept there can be policy matters where we should be tough, but being gratuitously tough on an unfortunate lot of fellow human beings, when it is totally avoidable, is inexcusable and unacceptable.

It's already cost more than $500 million, and the rip-off of the Australian public to pay this bill has scarcely started.

As a rich, white country we have bribed compliance from small, economically dependant non-white countries.

It is a thoroughly objectionable display of Australian neo-colonialism, of exploiting the dependency and vulnerability of poor non-white nations.

We have a moral obligation to accept back in Australia those bodies who fail the United Nations' refugee assessment process in the Pacific where our government has sent them - or does our government prefer to pay hundreds of millions in blood money annually for their continued detention in those island states indefinitely?

The UN offered to take over processing of these refugee claimants. Political paranoia caused the government to reject the offer as a trick and a trap. It wasn't, and it was foolish of the government to send the UN packing.

Or was it expedient to hold on to this issue as something that could be laboured and about which many desperate lies would be told intentionally, villainising the refugee claimants, because it was a good, hard-hitting election issue?

The UN offer should be revisited.

The UN would process claims far quicker than Australia can. It would be at arms-length from domestic political turmoil. Its methods would be domestically and internationally respected as impartial and fair.

The UN would have in place a resettlement program, although that is not necessarily a guarantee to speedy resettlement - but that is already our problem. To the extent there would be failed claimants, what to do with them would be an issue for the UN to handle. Currently it is one for us to wrestle with.

Ironically, one of the most noisy activist groups complaining about the dilatoriness of official processing of claims by refugee claimants - certain litigious lawyers - will suddenly be equally loud, at least, in condemning streamlined procedures, especially if their costly delaying legalisms are minimised by UN procedures.

Australia should also initiate action in the UN to review the UN convention relating to the status of refugees. Fifty years on, it is rather tired, stressed and of decreasing relevance to the contemporary flows of those claiming refugee status.

What we are confronted with is a major moral dilemma. Many of these boat people see global resource use as unfairly favouring the rich developed world and, not unreasonably, they want a better share of what is being consumed.

For instance, the United States has slightly less than 5 per cent of the world's population but consumes nearly 30 per cent of the gross world product. The richest 1 per cent of people in the world received as much income as the bottom 57 per cent, that is, fewer than 50 million people - the richest - received as much as 2.7 billion people, the poorest.

Australia is part of this lopsided global pattern of excessive preference for the rich while the poor languish.

A country like Australia has a grave and ballooning problem if the convention is unchanged.

For Australia, the flow of so-called boat people is in its infancy. If, for instance, China were to flounder badly or Indonesia start to unravel unpleasantly, the pilgrims to a better deal from life would hugely increase. We would experience the brunt of that movement.

Second, there is a very finite and very proximate limit to this country's people-carrying capacity. We are nearly there, I suspect, in spite of the righteous self-interest of big business, being sounded at high pitch through the Business Council of Australia, a body that prefers to moralise on issues like this than publicly rebuke the unethical conduct of some of the corporate world's big players - or maybe they are too powerful to take on.

Just about every one of the claims from the BCA for a vast increase in migration is gravely flawed and, if adopted, a threat to the fragile environment and the social cohesion of this country.

In spite of the discrediting of irrigation projects in Australia, they want to start more. They no doubt find appealing the fact that US Department of Labour studies establish that increased migration maintains downward pressure on the wages of the lesser-skilled workers.

They ignore the correlation between certain ethnic groups who experience high unemployment, and crime. It's not ethnicity that causes the crime, but anomie fashioned by social and economic exclusion disadvantaging certain groups - and all of that can be an undesirable strain on our social cohesion, of which we have seen too many unpleasant examples in recent years.

Bill Hayden is a former governor-general and federal Labor leader. This is an edited extract of his comments in Brisbane on Wednesday night in launching Demons and Democrats: 1950s Labor at the Crossroads, by Gavan Duffy.